The IFFT-based SQM method against digital distortion in GNSS signals

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) signal deformations could threaten the position accuracy and integrity of GNSS, especially for safety critical applications. Digital distortion is an important kind of deformations caused by failures inside the baseband generation unit onboard the GNSS satellites. Multi-correlator technique, as a prevalent signal quality monitoring (SQM) method, was developed to reliably detect the signal anomaly and therefore protect airborne users from this integrity threat. However, the conventional multi-correlator technique is unable to estimate the degree of distortion quantitatively, while another SQM method, the chip domain observable, has a poor real-time capability so that it could not meet the stringent time to alarm requirements. To solve the above problem, we derived the spectrum form of the conventional Threat Model A first and proposed a IFFT-based SQM algorithm. This new method can perform SQM easily by analyzing the impulses after PSD division and IFFT: Detect the presence of digital distortion by judging whether there is an impulse after IFFT and estimate the degree of distortion by computing the offset of the impulse. The results show that the IFFT-based method can not only detect digital distortion real-timely but also estimate the digital distortion degree quantitatively.